Comments and
Observations of Service Men and Women and their Employers Upon
Returning from Tours of Duty in Operation Iraqi
Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom Veterans to their Workplace

Significant numbers of
Wisconsin business employees have now served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation
Enduring Freedom.

Supposition:
Understanding how significant this service experience is on themselves
and their workplaces directly impacts effective business operations.

Of critical importance
is that the Iraq War is the first modern era, major conflict fought by
the United States in which the draft has not been employed. For the
National Guard this deployment is unusual. Many units have not been
deployed since WWII (Buchholz, p. 2). The wide use of the reserve
component of the armed forces of the United States is a “shift in
national thinking” that redefines the reserve from a strategic reserve
housed in the Continental United States to an “operationally ready and
relevant force” (Buchholz, p. 2) to be deployed, as active soldiers, around the
world.

Since the draft was eliminated in 1973, today’s
regular military personnel are volunteers; they know they may be called
to active duty. In contrast, for National Guard members, activation is
involuntary (Buchholz, p. 5). Mobilization pulls them from their
careers, employers and families from 7 to 18 months depending on branch
of service. This activation is also unique because a significant number
of these service members come from the same community. They are sent
overseas and return home as a unit. This decision to pull people from
their communities can have significant economic impact. Deployment has
also become recurring. Some veterans who hold critical Military
Occupation Specialties (MOS) have been deployed more than once in a four
year period. All these individuals leave their work and return after
their tours of duty with changed insights and views of life (Buchholz,
p. 162).

The Department of
Defense works to support deployments through the Employer Support of the
Guard and Reserve (ESGR). On its web page (http://www.esgr.net/about.asp)
the DOD helps to “Gain and maintain active support from all public and
private employers for the men and women of the National Guard and
Reserve” (Mission Statement). Generally, the ESGR seeks to make it easy
for reservists to serve and employers to support their service.
Fortunately, I am pleased to report that the Wisconsin ESGR is
enthusiastically supportive of my research effort to help both
employers and reservists utilize the deployment experience in support
of organizational effectiveness.

I believe that the
utilization of military service experience represents a rich depository
of knowledge on Management and Leadership. My belief is grounded on my service,
study of related literature and the many conversations I have had with business students
at Cardinal Stritch. The catalyst that motivated me to pursue
investigation of the relationships between the deployment experience
and the work experience occurred as I was listening to the radio. It was
a comment from new boss on being introduced to Iraq veteran (as
represented by National Public Radio 11/11/2007 Veterans Day) – “I
heard you just came back from Iraq! I don’t want to hear about it! I am
a pacifist!”

Stating the Obvious

My reaction to this
statement was that it was both short sighted, uninformed and defined, on the part of
the clueless “boss”, a limited view of how military service CHANGES US.
I contend that how we utilize the changed employee directly
affects the “bottom line”!

My experience in the
classroom and preliminary data indicates that significant numbers of enlisted veterans
have or are pursuing degrees in business and are managers in firms they
work for. Considerable numbers of officers (with college degrees) are
corporate managers and take up their management jobs upon return from
deployment. I also believe that both enlisted and officer women and men
possess insights into human behavior unique to their deployment
experience. They have been challenged to think differently. They have
been forced to confront their own personal strengths and weaknesses in
ways that their civilian world employment would never have challenged
them. Most importantly I believe that understanding the nature of
insight depth and breadth will yield revised management and leadership
processes which should directly affect the organizational bottom line.

Program

Through the use of
varied research techniques; I am working to answer the following research
questions:

How does war/reserve military experience impact
the work live of returning veterans?

How can employers facilitate the transition
from military service to work and benefit organizationally from the
process?

The individuals I wish
to talk to are:

Returning Wisconsin Operation Iraqi Freedom and
Operation Enduring Freedom serving in all branches of the
Guard and Reserve Armed Forces

The organizations that employ them

I believe that the
benefits of this study are:

Enhanced utilization of valuable veteran
employees by organizations that use them

Enhanced awareness by veteran employees of the
value their experiences have to communities they serve

Realization that veteran employee experiences
are an asset of life-long learning deserving of conscious
application to the “real world” of business in Wisconsin

Plan of Action

Both Project Surveys are
available using the following Survey Monkey links: